Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: The lack of a robust pipeline of medical therapeutic agents for the treatment of heart disease may be partially attributed to the lack of in vitro models that recapitulate the essential structure-function relationships of healthy and diseased myocardium. We designed and built a system to mimic mechanical overload in vitro by applying cyclic stretch to engineered laminar ventricular tissue on a stretchable chip. To test our model, we quantified changes in gene expression, myocyte architecture, calcium handling, and contractile function and compared our results vs. several decades of animal studies and clinical observations. Cyclic stretch activated gene expression profiles characteristic of pathological remodeling, including decreased α- to β-myosin heavy chain ratios, and induced maladaptive changes to myocyte shape and sarcomere alignment. In stretched tissues, calcium transients resembled those reported in failing myocytes and peak systolic stress was significantly reduced. Our results suggest that failing myocardium, as defined genetically, structurally, and functionally, can be replicated in an in vitro microsystem by faithfully recapitulating the structural and mechanical microenvironment of the diseased heart.
Language: English
Subfield: Surgery
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funders: National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, GlaxoSmithKline, National Institutes of Health, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Division of Materials Research, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
OpenAlex ID: W2079176005